Wrox is about to release a book by Jon Arking titled "Professional Windows Live Programming". As a Microsoft MVP, I was fortunate to get a pre-release copy.
The book does a good job highlighting the many services that makeup Windows Live, including:
While much of this information is already available on the web at dev.live.com (Microsoft's developer site for everything Windows Live), the information presented in the book offers the reader a good "get your feet wet" understanding of each of the topics covered.
Even with this exhaustive list of Windows Live topics, there are some Windows Live technologies not covered in this book, including:
As a gadget developer, I would have liked to see an expanded section on Live Gadgets. However, the information that is present is concise and accurate. The book goes into some depth describing how to setup IIS on your local machine to develop gadgets locally.
If you are a developer looking to incorporate Windows Live services into your application, this book is for you. You will need a good working knowledge of DHTML, JavaScript, C# and Web Services.
Be aware that, as with any web technology, changes are happening almost every day; many times faster than print books can keep up. For example, Virtual Earth recently released version 6, but the book states the lastest version is version 5. Even so, this book makes a good read now and should make a handy quick reference tool for some time to come.
If you are interested in a sneak peak, Wrox has the following excerpts from the book in PDF format:
The book doesn't officially go on sale until November 5th (at least here in the US), but you can pre-order the book from Amazon.com (who is offering a 5% discount on pre-order sales). You can also pre-order the book directly from the publisher.